


Masks

by hatstand



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Sorry Not Sorry, Torture, Whump, a little bit, i just wanted to break poe, i'll put him back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-13 20:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5715865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatstand/pseuds/hatstand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe's captured again, interrogated again - but under Phasma's control, this is a new First Order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erased

**Author's Note:**

> I love the meta that Phasma has just been waiting for Darth Tantrum and the whiny one to fuck things up enough for her to get to be in charge, so I ran with that - and how she might do things differently. In my head this is Poe & Finn and genfic, but then so is TFA according to many so ship away, my children.

There are footsteps outside, and Poe just has time to push himself into a sitting position against the wall before the cell door slides open. Two troopers step inside, carrying blasters.

He’s learned, now: don’t give them time to talk first.

‘So, buddy: which one, do you think?’

Poe leans his head back against the metallic cell wall, twisting to quirk an eyebrow at a drawing there: the rough shape of a spherical BB unit, painted in something red and smeary.

‘On the right? Really?’ He frowns, flicking his eyes between them. ‘I don’t know, this one on the left looks pretty built. I mean, he’s no Finn, but... Would you do a 360 for me, pal? Just a little twirl. With this ensemble you’re working I don’t have a lot to go on here.’

The troopers stiffen, turn heads, confused.

‘Ignore him,’ says a cutting voice, bored and angry at once. Captain Phasma strides into the cell between the two guards, who straighten at once.

He can feel their fear from here, which is - unhelpful. Everyone here is afraid, all the time. It’s exhausting. He gets distracted, wondering why you would ever decide to run a military operation on terror instead of loyalty: spends hours on it, unspooling here in the too-bright light. It reminds him of Finn. It reminds him how remarkable his last escape was. It reminds him that it isn’t going to happen this time.

(They never react, the stormtroopers. He mentions Finn every chance he gets, just in case he’s some folk hero to one of these poor deluded stolen kids: not the traitor but the one who got away. But he’s not even the traitor now. Reconditioning. Like he never existed.)

Phasma steps  forward and kneels, still towering over him. ‘What exactly do you think you’re doing ?’

Poe sniffs, trying to push himself up a little and feeling his ankle pulse nauseatingly. ‘Uh. Bravado? You have that here too, right? You just do it with, you know. A lot more chrome.’

He’s still not great at dealing with the masks. Especially not hers. His face reflects back, distorted and bloody and to be honest not great for morale.

(Phasma remembers Finn, he knows that much.)

Her head tilts, ever so slightly. She reaches out with her right gauntlet and grips his outstretched leg, low down, like a threat. Then she slides her hand slowly but inexorably lower, to where it’s bloody and useless and broken. He hisses at the contact.

She squeezes and he sees stars.

‘I will ask you again: where is the new Resistance base?’ she says, gripping his jaw with her other hand as he begins to writhe, pinning him up.

‘I still don’t know,’ he mumbles.

‘We’ve been to D’Qar. It’s a shell, empty, abandoned,’ she says, grinding his skull into the cold metallic wall. ‘You flew to attack Wafi Daraan from a new base.’

‘You say flew to, I say crashed on,’ he rasps. ‘Semantics.’

It does matter, as it happens. The Resistance have no idea that Wafi Daraan is now a First order outpost - which is why he was flying to Wafi Muus right next door on a medical supply recce and got shot out of the sky in a heartbeat. Shitty luck, that’s all it is, though he’s tickled that she thinks he might have tried taking out a base with a single x-wing. Apart from how, with the losses they're taking, soon it’s not going to be all that far from the truth. And how his T-70 is now a burnt-up twisted scrap of junk and -

Phasma presses down with her thumb, and he feels splintered bone shift and cries out. His hands shoot up, one gripping her wrist by his face, the other flapping helplessly somewhere towards his ankle, out of reach. It’s too much. He struggles for breath, his chest heaving in ragged gasps. She tilts her head; shifts her cool fingers; presses down at a new angle. This time he screams.

Bravado is awesome but it runs out. And if she keeps digging around in there he’s pretty sure he’s going to lose that leg.

‘Where is that new Resistance base?’

A cracked laugh comes out in place of an answer. He’s hysterical, with the pain and the horror, and the knowledge that whatever they do is not going to be enough. Kylo Ren is not here to take things from him he is not willing to give up. This version of the First Order is Phasma’s: blunt, brutal, ordinary. And he’s going to need that leg.

So he counts to three and lashes out in a wild swing, punching her in the head.

He knows it’ll have hurt him more than it hurt her but it’s so unexpected he catches her off guard. She falls backwards with a satisfying clatter.

The pair of troopers hesitate, glancing at each other, afraid to choose if they should lift the Captain from her undignified pose first or shoot the prisoner.

‘Retaliate!’ barks Phasma furiously - and they do, fast, with boots and blaster butts and he goes down after a minute or two - still coughing up a smile.

That’s why you run your military on loyalty. Because loyalty wins.

 

*

 

Loyalty wins, but it doesn’t perform miracles.

Every inch of him hurts. His knuckles are skinned and raw from throwing the punch at that damn shiny helmet. His head pounds from the knock he’s pretty sure put him out, blood matted in his hair where it split the skin and a steady thudding heat from the surrounding bruise. His lips are cracked and split. His back aches. His stomach is hollow and empty and pining for food it’ll only throw up but which he needs anyway. He’s still itchy all over from whatever insects live in the jungle he hid in after the crash till they tracked him down. And it all revolves around the central agony of his broken ankle, like satellites orbiting a sun.

He wants this to be over.

He wants to live.

But he wants this to be over.

Needs it to be over, soon, please.

They scrubbed his smeary drawing off the wall while he was out; erased it just like they erased Finn and it upsets him more than is normal. He cries over it and feels like an asshole. Then he draws it again but it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t look like it did before. Like it’s not the real BB-8.

Like it was ever the real BB-8.

But it still upsets him and when they scrub it out again he doesn’t put it back.

It feels like he gave them a failure, for free.

 

*

 

Then they turn out the lights, and it’s nothing but dark.

 

*


	2. Fed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasma's next interrogation strategy is not what Poe expects. At all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify tags: there's a reference to the potential for non-con in this chapter as a feared possibility, but there is no non-con in this chapter or in the rest of this story.

The next time the door opens the light is dazzling.

Two troopers take one arm each and pull him up off the floor and Poe yells out, can’t help it.

Then he’s dragged out of the cell, knees trailing on the floor. The pull on his ankle is unbearable. So is the muttering of every trooper they pass as he’s hauled through the - ship? base? - he doesn’t know, it’s all so bright and troopers are pausing from their duties to smack him around as they go, yank on his hair, to mutter obscenities and promises to fuck him up later.

Which prods his slow, slowed-down brain to wonder if there will be a later.

He hasn’t been out of the cell since he got taken, not for interrogation. So either they’re taking him to an execution, or this is something new.

He catches a familiar smell - an engine, a TIE engine, he must be near a hangar or a launch bay - and it reminds him of Finn. It’s like turning on a little flame inside. He grabs hold of it; guards it close; imagines the trooper on his left is actually his buddy, here, by his side, rescuing him all over again.

Then they halt outside another blank door in an eerily quiet corridor.

It slides open.

Inside is a small, sparse but relatively comfortable cell. There’s a padded bench; datascreens and shelving; a table, with chairs. Accommodation, not the brig. And there’s no bunk, which means it’s through that narrow doorway, which means this belongs to someone high-ranking.

‘Put him in the chair,’ says a familiar voice, still bored, still angry.

Poe feels cold slosh through his gut, because he’s been in a chair on a First Order ship before, and the memory of his mind being stripped open and flat-out robbed sets his adrenaline spiking and the state he’s in he’s not sure his heart can handle beating that fast.

But instead he’s thrown, none too gently, into a seat at the small metal table. It’s not a comfortable chair, by any means. But it is just a chair. The troopers loosen their grip on his arms and he sinks down, trying to angle his leg so his foot has some support as they march out; trying to breathe; trying not to throw up.

Captain Phasma, in her full armour, steps through the narrow doorway.

He feels shocky and afraid and when she walks towards him holding a syringe and jabs it in his neck that feeling doesn’t go away - but almost at once a lot of others do.

He gasps at the sudden relief.

‘Universal painkiller,’ says Phasma curtly. ‘Don’t get used to it. Our supplies are limited.’

It’s an unexpected admission. It doesn’t seem her style, and he feels rattled. But mostly like he can breathe without wincing, can flex his fingers, can sit here with his leg propped without biting back on a gasp, so right now he’ll let it slide.

‘Thank you,’ he says, by default, and he wants to take it back, and then he doesn’t, and then he doesn’t know, he’s just tired, he’s just really tired.

Phasma stands still, head inclined, as if this is equally bizarre to her.

Then she reaches up and, with a click, detaches her helmet and lifts it off.

‘Shit,’ Poe murmurs, before he can stop himself, because he’s pretty sure the moment you see the monster under the bed is when it eats you.

It turns out Phasma is indeed a person, a real face under that mask: pale-skinned, with intelligent eyes and a capacity for stillness and calm he finds surprising.

‘You haven’t eaten in days,’ she says, still sounding bored, but not angry. ‘If you die you’re no use to me. And my troopers are exemplary fighters, but rather dull company. So we will try something new.’

There’s a beep somewhere near, and the cell suddenly fills with an agonising smell: food, hot food, something breadlike and damp, some kind of meat, something utterly unfamiliar but spicy.

Poe’s had nothing but water and not enough of that for two, three days, maybe more. His mouth fills with saliva.

A droid rolls in, a model he doesn’t recognise, and bustles to add plates, glasses, cutlery to the table: two sets, one each. It comes back with dishes piled with steaming hot food, beakers of water and what looks like some kind of wine.

‘That will be all,’ says Phasma stiffly.

The droid rolls out.

The lights dim.

Phasma sits in the empty chair opposite him, and begins to spoon food onto his plate.

 

*

 

Fuck.

Resistance training covers capture, interrogation, imprisonment. Pilots are more likely to burn up or crash out but the General insists on it; reminds everyone why she’d know, just to make sure they remember. Poe knows about watching a spot on the wall; telling himself a story; visualising himself in the T-70. He knows about talking less, even though he sucks at it.

They even covered food deprivation, though in the Resistance supplies are so tight they’re all prepped already.

But -

Poe finally nails down exactly what is screaming through his veins. He expected an interrogation, or worse. And this looks a fuck of a lot like a date.

Poe has been on a lot of dates.

Poe likes going on dates, and everything about them. He likes their ritual, their rules, the easy joy of being in good company, charming people, being charmed. He likes that they usually end in sex.

He doesn’t like this.

Kylo Ren isn’t here to strip all his control and consent and autonomy away, but Phasma sitting across from him quietly cutting her meat into small squares in a locked cell still sets off every nerve.

_she can’t make him do anything she can’t make him do anything she can’t make him_

But in here he isn’t sure that’s true and he wishes she hadn’t given him that shot, because it’s the first time he’s felt OK in days only now he’s wondering what else it took away.

‘Eat,’ she says calmly, gesturing at his plate. ‘The rations here are fairly bland but I told the droid to maximise taste as well as nutritional value. I imagine you need the latter by now.’ She forks in another mouthful. ‘Mm. It’s good.’

He doesn’t know what this is: a trick? A trap? Though she’s eating the same food she put on his plate.

There is nothing like this in any of Finn’s debriefs, he knows that much.

Poe had sat in with the General, Ackbar, Statura as they performed what he supposed might be called an interrogation too, except theirs came with rest breaks, food breaks, kindness, sympathy - all to Finn’s bewilderment. Hence Poe, not that’d been much help. He still vibrates with anger at how the First Order treats their own. Victims, that’s what they are. Cannon fodder, too; now he’s flown a TIE he knows firsthand that every inch of that ship is designed to be manoeuvrable and murderous, with about as much shielding as you’d give a kid who might scuff their knees riding their first landskiff. And then there was Finn, trying to understand why he was so mad, and Poe cringing, gripping his arms, trying to explain that it wasn’t his fault. That Finn was not what he was mad at.

Regardless, there’s nothing coercive or sexualized in any of the training Finn related; far from it. So this is - he doesn’t know what this is.

Phasma sips her wine and eats another forkful.

Poe picks up his water warily and risks a mouthful, watching her, not really caring how obviously freaked out he is because that ship sailed already. Even with the painkiller his gut cramps. But it doesn’t come back up like he fears it might, and his dry mouth is screaming for more, so he downs it.

Phasma refills his beaker.

‘I must confess I’m a little disappointed by your  dinner conversation,’ she says. ‘You were amusing when you first got here. I enjoyed your bluster; your, what did you call it? Bravado. You’re a soldier, I imagined we might find common ground to talk about.’

‘I’m a pilot,’ he croaks.

She lifts a brow. ‘Does that make you better, in your eyes? Superior?’ She visibly thinks. ‘More valuable to the Resistance, due to your hours of training.’ She nods, satisfied with her answer.

It’s odd, watching a face so used to being hidden it doesn’t know to hide the cogs turning. But there’s a mechanical economy in the way she does it too. No visual communication, no facial expression to do the talking. So the words matter more; have to be chosen carefully, and the face remains impassive, uninvolved.

He thinks of BB-8, who doesn’t need a face to be expressive as hell.

He thinks about the crash, and feels horrible all over again, and makes a promise to himself that he is going to not think about that any more.

‘The traitor who took you from the Finalizer, under the old Order,’ says Phasma, spooning more food onto her plate. ‘FN-2187?’

Poe’s mouth twitches. That’s not his name.

‘He was one of mine. I thought he’d be valuable, too. I don’t only value pilots. I train my recruits personally, you know. They may wear masks but I know each of them. I care when they fail.’

‘Finn didn’t fail,’ he snaps back quietly.

Phasma carefully slices up another piece of meat.

‘You’re still not eating,’ she observes.

Poe picks up a spoon - he’s got a spoon, no knife or fork, fair enough - and risks a taste. It’s good. And it’s not because she told him to, she’s right, he needs to, he needs to stay alive and eating is a part of that. Eating and drinking: basic life requirements. He scoops up a few more mouthfuls, willing himself to take it slowly to give his deprived system time.

Phasma drinks her wine, and sits back, looking thoughtful. ‘This reminds me of the food on Baronis. In the Angenal system? My father used to make a dish rather like this, sweet and sour together. I haven’t tasted anything like it in years.’

So she’s career First Order, not like Finn. Makes sense. Probably grew up in a wealthy Empire family and didn’t want to let go.

She seems as aware of the intel she’s just thrown him as he is.

‘And now, you tell me something about _you_.’ Phasma drinks her wine. ‘I believe it’s called conversation.’

It’s sarcasm - only it isn’t, because he kind of had to teach it to Finn, the concept that you didn’t just announce whatever was in your head while someone else was speaking, or sit in silence for hours when there were only two of you and one of you kept throwing out feed lines. The First Order taught troopers what they needed, nothing more. Quite a few things they didn’t need too.

But Phasma wasn’t born here.

And now, at last, he gets it.

She must be bored to tears.

Poe grips his spoon, and eats, empties his plate, smiling and silent while she asks, and asks, less bored, increasingly angry, and he can’t wait to get back to the new base to tell General Organa he finally learned how to talk less.

 

*


	3. Saved

He’s not sure if it’s the painkiller, the food, or the feeling he won a battle, however small.  But Poe sleeps better than he does in his own bunk.

He wakes to the sound of blasters, running feet, panic.

The cell is still dark, the painkiller’s faded out and he can feel every jagged bone in his damn ankle but he pushes himself up, sitting, back pressed against the wall, his good leg bent with the foot on the floor in case he needs to move fast.

The floor rocks.

He hears an explosion.

The sound of weapons gets nearer, nearer , a clusterfuck outside his cell - then the door hisses open and he’s blinking up at Finn, panting, holding a blaster, wearing his old armour apart from the helmet, eyes wide.

Finn.

Here, in this awful lonely place, with a sort of giddy halo about him like he’s a celestial being only with a stupid grin and the sort of hug you only give someone you’re rescuing if you have not actually thought it through at all.

He rears back at the sound Poe makes.

‘Whoa - did I hurt you?’

Poe lets his forehead sag against Finn’s shoulder.

‘You saved me,’ he breathes.

‘Yeah. Hell yeah we did!’

Poe feels Finn’s hand on the back of his head, gentle, now wary of hitting a sore spot. It slides down to his neck and the simple warm contact makes him sigh out with desperate relief.

‘Rey’s here too. She insisted.’

‘I didn’t think - I didn’t think anyone would come - ’

He reaches up and clutches at Finn’s shoulder and just rests his head there a moment, and it’s a little pathetic, maybe, but he doesn’t care, Finn came back for him, Rey came back for him, and he’s not going to give up the base, he’s not going to get them all killed, and it’s all going to be ok, now, it’s all...

He feels a weird shift around him, as if the ship has taken a sudden new course - or - no, as if -

‘Aw hell,’ murmurs Finn, as the cell lights shift to red and an alarm begins to wail. He feels himself pressed back into the wall. ‘Poe, the ship is crashing. Must be a self-destruct, a First Order ship would never be so easily taken down by a Resistance squad.’

‘Huh?’ mumbles Poe, confused.

Red lights strobe glossily across Finn’s eyes, gazing into his.

There’s a wrenching groan deep in the engines: the sound of a Destroyer veering dangerously out of control.

‘Where do we go, Poe?’ Finn says, his hand still warm on Poe’s neck. ‘We need to program the escape pods on a course to the Resistance base. The new base. The new base on...’

Berr II. The base is on Berr II.

But Finn knows the base is on Berr II.

Finn and Rey wouldn’t have come to rescue him, not in a million years, because even if they’d wanted to the General would never have allowed two such valuable assets to risk themselves for him.

Wouldn’t have risked anyone. Couldn’t have. He didn’t have time to send a distress signal; too far out, crashing too fast, too dangerous to throw out a beacon that could be traced back. No one, not one soul in the Resistance, has any idea where he is.

He feels hot, sick, wrong.

Poe shudders as the hand warm on his neck is a gauntlet, and the urgent hopeful face of Finn resolves into Phasma kneeling at his side.

‘No,’ he gasps, slipping sideways at once the moment she shifts away from his shoulder. ‘Fuck, no.’

Phasma stands, gazing down.

‘Report mission success. FN-2187 is indeed working _with_ the Resistance, as a traitorous collaborator, and he is assumed alive. Activate his tracking device. We’ll be able to locate the Resistance base within hours - alert all commands.’

 

*

 

The drug - whatever it was - lingers in Poe’s system and he keeps seeing phantom faces that set him clawing at thin air, hopeful, helpless.

Then he spends a good hour throwing up.

He’s shaky, feverish. He needs water. Another painkiller. He needs this to not be happening. But he doesn’t have any of that, so he presses his too-hot face to the cold cell floor and he tries to fathom the how and why and the when.

What she planned, what she planted, what was all him.

He feels like a lot of it was him and it colossally does not help. Neither does realising why it has all taken so long. Phasma assumed the Resistance would have interrogated Finn and then shot him dead and disintegrated the remains - because that’s what they would’ve done. They never even imagined he’d have lived. Until Poe came along and wouldn’t shut up about him.

And now he’s on his face with a broken ankle in a dark cell smelling of puke, feeling like a piece of shit, and everyone he cares about is going to die.

Finn should be a symbol to the First Order, of hope and justice and self-expression - and he isn’t.

And now Finn will be a symbol to the Resistance, of betrayal and lies and the fundamental impossibility of peace between them, ever - and he’s not that, he’s not.

He’s the reverse.

Poe’s only alive right now because of this kid, and this kid - yeah, the Force, he gets it, it’s gonna be big - but it can’t do it alone. The Jedi can’t do it alone, keep the peace, couldn’t when there were hundreds and right now there’s two, one and a half, maybe not even that. But this one kid, who turned his back on a life of callous soulless murder without any expectation of getting away with it - he’s what’s been giving Poe hope. Not just that they can keep fighting but they can win. If there’s one good guy there can be more.

Unless -

Unless Finn knew all along. Unless Finn was handpicked to rescue Poe, to infiltrate the Resistance, until Phasma was ready to make her move.

He dismisses it before the thought is even fully formed. Feels sweaty with shame that he even thought it at all.

Loyalty wins.

Then he thinks: there’s going to be a moment when Finn finds out, that it’s down to him, however unintentionally. That Finn joining the Resistance is why the skies over Berr II are now full of TIEs and bombers. He knows Phasma now, a little. He knows she cares about what’s happening behind the mask. She’ll make sure he knows.

Poe pictures the look on Finn’s face, and that’s when he decides.

He’s not going to die in this crappy puke-smelling miserable cell on a Destroyer. (He knows he’s on a ship now: thank you .) He’s going to get out, even if it’s on his hands and knees. He’s going to live. He’s going to live so he can tell Finn it’s not his fault, all over again.

 

*


	4. Gone

One thing this version of the First Order has in common with the past one: it loves a sense of occasion.

So Poe knows not to bother trying to break out of his cell - which is lucky, what with it being an impenetrable steel box, and his ankle still being really very broken, and the rest of him not that far behind.

But he’s ready when the door whirrs open and the lights flash back on, achingly bright.

‘Bring him,’ says the familiar bored angry voice, and he doesn’t bother looking up.

Two troopers scrape him off the floor, and pull.

The drag on his ankle is worse this time: he doesn’t know if it’s on purpose, if it’s a side-effect of whatever the hell that drug was, if he’s just in worse shape now than he even realised but he can’t keep his mouth shut as they haul him down the corridor. It hurts so much. The smooth floor has small joins in it - even the First Order has cracks, he tries to hang onto that, tries - but every jolt makes him yelp and there’s no release. Just a long slow sapping journey to -

The bridge.

This Destroyer is a new design, by the look of it. The same rows of uniformed officers, unmasked; the same screens and readouts; but the front viewscreen is gone, replaced by a monitor that projects the same image onto the interior of the ship: not quite the same clarity, sure, but not the same risk either. You flew an x-wing into the old ones, you’d die - but you’d kill the room and knock out their whole control system while you were at it. Now: he’s pretty sure you’d just die.

He wonders what it looks like from the outside. Guesses she’s made it look just the same.

Shit.

He needs to get out, he needs to get out, he needs to warn them -

‘Drop him,’ says Phasma coldly.

The pairs of arms holding him up simply let go, and he crumples, his head connecting with the glossy floor with an unpleasant crack.

He can feel eyes all over him. Every chair in the room tilted his way; every curled lip, every hiss of disgust.

In one small, private, cordoned-off portion of his mind, Poe gives up.

It’s too much. It’s too hard. He’s in pain, can’t fight, can’t walk. They’re tracking Finn. She wouldn’t have dragged him up here if it wasn’t too late already, if the assault wasn’t underway already, if she didn’t know she’d already won.

But he smacks that portion of his mind in the face, tells it to fuck off, and resolves to not let it get to be in charge.

‘Hey. Phasma?’

Is that her first name? Last name? Cool badass nickname? Finn never explained how this worked, exactly. Troopers received orders; they didn’t talk. And his voice is raw, ragged, as he rolls over; tries to sit up; feels dizzy and settles for propping himself on one elbow.

‘I’m sorry we didn’t talk more. Before. When I had the chance. I like to think I might have changed your mind on a thing or two.’

He means it, too. He’s spun over that meal in his head and he knows what she was at, he knows it would never have gone his way, but she was a person once. She had another life once. He gambled on pissing her off, and maybe he should’ve gambled on talking her around, or at least trying to. Planting a seed. So he wants to say that, before, you know. It doesn’t matter but he wants to say it anyway.

Phasma looks down, and he realises knowing what she looks like under there doesn’t make any difference; the disdain is rolling off her anyway.

‘You have a very high opinion of yourself.’

Poe huffs out something like a laugh. ‘Usually? Yeah. Right now, not so much.’

‘Fortunately all you need to do at present is observe. Officer Beddor, report.’

‘Arriving at the location now, Captain. Early scouting patrols show no sign of air cover. They don’t know we’re coming.’

Phasma nods. ‘Ready the ventral cannons. TIE groups seven through eleven to be ready to launch immediately on arrival from hyperspace. This won’t take long.’

Poe sinks into the floor again. He can’t do this. And he can’t give up. He can’t think of a damn thing he can do that’s going to be any use, but he can’t give up either, so he listens, waits.

‘Emerging from hyperspace in four, three, two - ’

There’s a familiar whine, and the screen resolves from calm blues to a starscape that makes his palms itch with how much he wants to be out in it.

An empty starscape.

No Berran System.

No planets.

Nothing.

 

*

 

There’s a very odd pause; long enough to make Poe prop himself back up on his elbow.

‘Report,’ barks Phasma.

‘Er... readings are... we’re picking up the signal you ordered us to trace, Captain, but... it’s right in front of us.’

‘There is nothing right in front of us, Officer Beddor,’ says Phasma, drily.

‘Confirmed. But that is still the location of the signal, Captain.’

They all stare at the nothing.

Poe starts to laugh. He can’t help it, awkward silences always do this for him, and he’s on that knife edge between pain bringing him up sharp and making him lose it completely, and also he’s pretty sure the stars he’s looking at aren’t above Berr II, are the stars over Justina, and that means - oh, this is the good kind of hysteria, this is the kind he -

Phasma kicks him in the face, hard.

He curls inward, keeps still, guards his head with his arms. She kicks him again anyway, this time in the chest, knocking his breath away, then kneels.

‘What is it? Why are you laughing?’ She grips his hair, lifting his head. ‘Tell me. I can make you tell me.’

A hundred alarms sound suddenly, all across the bridge.

The projected screen reveals multiple ships winking into the space around the Destroyer from hyperspace. Resistance ships.

Justina. Not a Resistance base, but an emergency rendezvous point. Every pilot knows it. It’s the last resort, if captured. Where you send the bad guys, if you have no choice; if you can’t hold out. There’s a permanent beacon to alert the Resistance: any activity will bring fighters to that spot. It’s never been used yet. A one-off kind of thing. Has to be worth it.

But he didn’t bring the Destroyer here. Finn’s signal did.

‘Tell me!’ screams Phasma - and Poe has no answer, has no clue what is going on or why they’re here - but he can hear x-wings and see the sparks begin to fly from the command desks on the bridge, and at this moment he’s just plain delighted.

He smiles up at her; shrugs. He can see his face reflected back, teeth bloody. He looks a wreck, but a happy one.

She groans, flinging him down and marching to throw out orders, demand updates, as outside a battle rages.

 

*

 

The floor under him is vibrating, aftershocks as the x-wing assault relentlessly takes out the cannons, the fuel cells, like clockwork. He’s playing out orders in his head: go for the hangar next, stop any more TIEs coming out after you or those thugs’ll pull you away from the target, little gnats you have to swat, distractions but the deadly kind, they need to -

There’s a satisfying boom from below, and he feels the whole ship rock.

Great job. He’s proud of them. Now they need to draw the remaining TIEs in close, pair up to counter their speed and -

_yes that’s what they’re doing all right just calm down_

Poe’s eyes snap open. His palm hits the deck, pressing him up. What the hell...?

_i am telling him shut up_

_finn i’m telling him now, shut up_

_shut up and concentrate on shooting, all right, you aren’t that good_

_see?_

_sorry poe_

_hold on, we’re coming, i promise_

And it’s gone again, the voice in his head that he knows isn’t just in his head, as the screen projection fills with the glorious swoop of the Millennium Falcon, dragging TIEs in its wake as it vanishes at glorious speed, and more sparks fly across the bridge, and the floor shifts again, this time beginning an inexorable tilt off its axis.

He really wishes he’d gotten her to let him fly that thing.

 

*

 

‘Shh. He’s supposed to be resting.’

Poe hears a  - no.

He’s out again.

 

*

 

‘I told you, he’s resting. And I’m a General so apparently what I say goes. Go away.’

Poe sits up and says, Actually, I’d like some company, and what happened out there and is everyone ok? because no one just lies there when the General’s on deck - except apparently he does in fact just lie there, so he guesses he’s still tired or healing or whatever.

It’s annoying.

But it’s ok. It could be worse. A lot.

 

*

 

Everything hurts, he’s just going to lie here, ok.

 

*

 

‘OK, but only if you promise to stay quiet, hmm? And don’t roll on my foot.’

Poe tries to open his eyes as usual and this time it works.

‘Easy. Slowly. Don’t try to sit up, not yet, give yourself a minute.’

He feels a small hand pressing on his chest, and the vaguest swirl of Force suggestion behind it too, gossamer-light, like the General when she wants him to know she really is wishing him luck.

‘Rey.’

His voice sounds like someone else’s and his throat feels awful but she squeezes his limp hand, and her face appears above his, all joy.

‘Welcome back.’

‘Thank you,’ he mouths out, taking a moment to breathe, to slowly let the world back in: the rough linens under his fingers; the unrecycled air in his lungs; a faint ache of hunger.

A medidroid jabs at his upper arm, and the mistiness clears further.

This time he sits up, really.

There’s a plaintive noise from his left, and Poe feels his insides contract at the familiarity of a BB unit’s voice; at the loss.

Rey grins easily, tilting her head.

‘BB-8?’

Poe half falls out of the bed to greet the wildly beeping droid.

‘Oh, shit, BB-8, I’m so pleased you’re all right!’ Poe’s scarred hands flutter carefully around the little droid’s body, looking for hurt, and he nearly buckles with the relief, a little overwhelmed. ‘I thought I killed you, in the crash, I thought, I’m so sorry - ’

BB-8 spins indignantly, beeping out a defensive explanation of sorts. Thrown clear, but into dense jungle, unable to reach him. Witnessed his capture. Able to send a distress call, coded, to warn the Resistance of the Wafi Daraan First Order outpost.

Rey nods, taking up the story.

‘Once we knew you’d been taken, the General was ready for a Justina assault. But - just a few hours before, we’d found Finn’s tracker. We didn’t know if you’d be sending them to Justina - ’ There’s a reproachful whine from BB-8, shaking its head crossly. ‘ - at the same time as they worked out how to reactivate it. We couldn't cover both. So I thought - why not put them together? In the same place? Then whichever they tracked first, we’d be ready.’

‘I didn’t give them Justina.’

BB-8 looks up at Rey, then at Poe, rocking, a little smug.

‘Which means the Justina protocol can be used again,’ says Rey, smiling. ‘We just put the beacon somewhere else.’

‘Phasma?’

Rey shrugs. ‘Escape pod. But we took out the ship, and the Wafi Daraan outpost too. We hurt them, today.’

She loves all this, he can tell. Not just the strategising, though she has the knack; this being part of something. Poe reaches out, touching her arm gently. ‘Thank you.’

She grins. ‘I’ll be back,’ she says, spinning away, muttering stern instructions to the medidroid that fusses in the doorway.

Poe scrunches up his face, and drops his head, pressing his forehead against BB-8’s smaller upper dome till it stills under his touch. He rests there a moment. The droid’s beeping slows; drifts from indignant and firm to gentle, concerned.

‘I’m ok, buddy. I know. I know, it was bad, but I’ll be ok. I’ll be ok.’ Poe lifts up. ‘Thank you. Hey. You listening? You did good. Thank you.’

Poe’s face tightens at the thought of alternative futures, and BB-8 nudges against his knee sternly.

‘All right! I’m happy, ok? I’m happy and I’m alive and you’re alive and - ’

BB-8 beeps thoughtfully, then wheels backwards, its head swivelling to look down the medbay.

To Finn, who is running towards Poe as if he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

So broken ankle or no, Poe’s going to stand up, because he is not turning that down for one moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I may have maxed out on resilient!Poe who gives up and then battles on long before the end of this but fuckit. Stupid pilots and their lovely breakable faces.


End file.
